My thanks to Halina & Chaim
Birenbaum for drawing my attention to the book about the extermination of the
Jews of Olkusz and giving it to me. I thank also Jan Jagelski from the Jewish
Historical Institute in Warsaw for giving me the permission to use and post the
photographs in the Institutes' collection.

My deep gratitude and appreciation to
the author Mr. Krzysztof Kocjan, for writing this book so that the world
will know... I thank him from the bottom of my heart for his cooperation,
patience and the material he sent me to be included in this web site.

Messages may be sent to the author, email:krzysztofkocjan
"at" poczta.onet.pl at (replace "at" by @ to
avoid spam). The author will be very pleased to get any message from someone
who was born in Olkusz or is a descendant of a Jew from Olkusz.

The book may be ordered from Mr.
Kocjan, using the same email as above

The German forces seized Olkusz
on 5 September 1939. Between 5 and 7 September 1939 Germans killed in Slawkow
98 retiring Jews. Soon after the German forces' invasion Jews were forced to
participate in public works and to clear the snow from streets. They were
removed from nicer houses from a center of the town and their property was
robbed. As of 26 October 1939 a part of the Olkusz district together with the
town itself, was included into the Reich III, and the eastern part of this
district was included into General Gouvernement. Probably also in 1939 the
Judenrat (the Jewish Council appointed by the Germans) was established by either
Azryl Flaszeneberg or its chairman, Szwarcberg. The Olkusz Jewish
community - together with the rest of the communities of the region - was
incorporated into the Headquarters of the Jewish Communities in the Upper and
Eastern Silesia (Ostoberschleisen) with its seat in Sosnowiec.

Probably also at the beginning
of December 1939 Jews were forced to wear an armband with a Dawid star on a
left sleeve. Even earlier, on 8 September 1939, when German marks were put into
circulation, the occupying authorities introduced first limitations of Jewish
people's freedoms by forbidding them to have more than 1 thousand RM or 2
thousand zloty in their houses. The obligation to mark Jewish shops and
workshops with a special sign was introduced. Jews were forbidden to give their
possessions to Aryans and all their deposits of securities were blocked.

According to a German census of
23 December 1939, 4,097 Jews (7,8% of the whole society) lived in 6 towns of
the Olkusz district. Most of them (3,080) lived in Olkusz, then in Slawkow
(960), in Ogrodzieniec (27), in Gorenice (14) and in Boleslaw and Klucze (in
eighths). The considerable majority - 4,053 people - used the Jewish language
at home (3,049 in Olkusz, 951 in Slawkow, 24 in Ogrodzieniec, 14 in Gorenice, 8
in Klucze and 7 in Boleslaw).

In January 1940 the Sosnowiec
Headquarters was likely to appoint a commissioner of the Judenrat (Jewish
Council appointed by the Germans) in Olkusz - a Sobol. Jews were forced
to make a contribution in gold. Sobol organized the police, which made
sure that no Jew evaded public works. At the same time, the synagogue was
profaned. In February 1940 a part of Jewish shops was closed down, the others
were taken over by Germans. Jewish cemeteries were also systematically
destroyed by means of using the tombstones to harden the surface (e.g. a square
near a former grammar-school's building at Pilsudskiego Street), to clean up
surfaces and for construction (e.g. fire dam in Pomorzany at Pomorska Street).

On 15 June 1940 most of Chorzow
Jews were resettled in Olkusz (the others were resettled in Jaworzno). Another
source states that about 1500 Jews from Chorzow, Piasnik and other places of
the Upper Silesia resettled in Olkusz. The resettled Jews were put among local
Jews, whose number reached 4000 at that time. Information on a displacement of
Silesian Jews, among other things, to Olkusz, is confirmed by another source,
which mentions a displacement of Jews from Bielsk, Cieszyn (and surroundings),
Mikolow, Myslowice and Zywiec to concentration places in Chrzanow and Olkusz
districts.

Jews, like other inhabitants of
this town, were the victims of the so-called "bloody Wednesday" on 31
July 1940. From the survived documentation appears that the person who was
particularly tormented in a physical and psychological manner in the Olkusz
market (Rynek) was Mosze Ben Icchak Hagerman, dajan (a religious
judge) of the Olkusz Jewish community. An Olkusz Jew, Majer, a citizen
of the US, was exceptionally mangled then.

Olkusz, 31.7.1940: The Dayan Hangerman being abused by the Germans while the
men were ordered to lie down in the square of town

Olkusz: "Bloody Wednesday", 31.7.1940

Olkusz: 31.7.1940

4,021 Jews (8,1%) lived in the part of a former Olkusz district
included into the Reich on 10 October 1940.

Deportations of Olkusz Jews to labor
camps in the Reich began in October 1940 with deporting 140 people. The second
transport with 130 Jews departed in January 1941, and the third one -
consisting of 300 women - left in August 1941.

In September 1941 a white
shoulder band was changed for the yellow patch in the shape of the Star of
David with the word "Jude", which every Jewish man and woman from
the age of 12 had to wear on the chest sown to their clothes.

In September 1941 Jews were
displaced from the center of Olkusz to the ghetto established in the suburbs of
the town near Pareze, Sikorka and Slowiki. The displacement was carried out by
a special displacement commission consisting of Germans not from Olkusz in the
presence of officials of the Sosnowiec Jewish Judenrat. Jews were allowed to
transport all their belongings to the quarter by carts, which were assigned by
the Jewish Community. Houses were emptied systematically according to streets.
This displacement lasted about 10 days. Jews were informed about the
displacement a few days earlier. Each Jew received a call from the Displacement
Commission of the Judenrat and had to pay a certain amount of money, set by
that Commission, for a flat. Housing conditions in that quarter were very hard.
Those who paid a lot of money got better flats. The best flats consisted of one
room and a kitchen. The poor, about 7 or 8 people, lived in one room. The rich
received flats in the part of the quarter, which was near the town, and the
poor lived in Sikorka Street. At the same time, Germans resettled Poles from
Sikorka to Jewish houses in the town. An Olkusz ghetto was probably not walled
off, but the German and Jewish police guarded its entrance.

At the beginning of 1942,
between February and April, three Jews were executed by hanging in order to warn
local people against illegal trade. They were: Jakub Mordka (Leon) Glajtman,
Chaim Pinkus and Herz MoszekMatner, caught while
smuggling sausages on the way from Olkusz to Chrzanow and sent to jail. In the
morning, on the day of their execution, Germans fetched 20 Jews, elder and
respected citizens, who had to prepare 3 gallows. 100-200 Jews were forced to
assist that execution. The men condemned to death went to gallows saying the
prayer "Szma Israel". After the execution the crowd was
dismissed, and the condemned to death were hanged till the following day. They
were guarded by the German police. The following day Germans took the bodies
away.

Olkusz: the public hanging.

In the spring of1942 the number
of deportations of Olkusz Jews to forced labor camps increased. On 12 March
1942, 117 Jewish women at the age of thirteen to twenty eight were sent to
labor camps; their list is now in the archives of the Jewish Historical
Institute in Warsaw. On 20 April 1942 a transport of 140 men departed from
Olkusz and one month later, on 21-23 May 1942 during the Shavuoth
holiday (Pentecost), 1,000 Jews, including women, were deported.

There was a kitchen for poor
Jews in Olkusz, organized by the community, in which 300 dinners were served.
There was also a kindergarten for about 30 children aged less than 7, who were
entertained, they received meals and in the evening went home. The Jews in
Olkusz worked in the suitcase factory and in the branch of the Rosner's tailor
shop. There was a Jewish hospital in a former girls' grammar-school building,
which was run by a doctor Marian Auerhahn-Gluszecki.

In June 1942 the Olkusz ghetto was liquidated.
From the surviving Jews' reports appears that the Aktion of the liquidation
started on the night of9 June or before dawn on 10 June 1942. The German forces
took decisions regarding liquidation of the Jewish ghetto but it was the Jewish
police who carried out the liquidation action directly. At the beginning, first
Jews were placed in the community kitchen (a former boys' grammar-school)
adjoining the Jewish hospital. Here, guarded by the Jewish police, they stayed
till the following day when next Jews (total of 3,400 people) were brought to a
square next to the kitchen. Also in that square the SS-man Kucinski made the
selection. From that square the majority of people was led to a National Health
Service's building under construction at Mickiewicza Street. A small number of
(about 200) - considered to be able to work - stayed in the building with a
community kitchen, from which they were deported to Sosnowiec the following
day, and from there to forced labor camps (Annaberg, Blechhammer, Gross-Rosen
and Buchenwald). It is not unlikely that workers of the Rosner's shop (although
they probably left Olkusz two weeks earlier and went to Bedzin together with
sewing machines), officials of the community and the Jewish police, medical
personnel (about 200-300 people) stayed in that building, and were deported to
the camp in Sosnowiec afterwards. On Saturday morning Jews from the small
neighboring towns and villages were brought to Olkusz and gathered at a small
square vis-a-vis the National Health Service's building. Jews gathered in that
building were divided into two groups: the first one was taken to railway
station on 13 June (Saturday), placed in the cars and sent to Auschwitz
Birkenau. The next deportation consisted of the Jews who stayed in the Health
Service's building, departed on 15 June (Monday). Patients from the Jewish
hospital were also deported along with this deportation. After the ghetto's
liquidation, 10 to 20 workers of a suitcase factory still remained in Olkusz,
they had to live in a building belonging to a factory and were not allowed to
leave it. In July 1943 they were deported also to camps. On 1 August 1942 there
were 78 Jews in Olkusz. On 10 October 1943 there were no longer Jews on the
territory of the Olkusz district.

On 15 December 1944, the SS
shot two people in Pomorzany - a worker Wladyslaw Was (born in 1898) and a
butcher Wiktor Was (born in 1895) - suspected of killing a Jew. From Pomorzany
inhabitants' reports appears that a victim of the murderers-brothers was a Jew
hidden by them during the war. What is significant is the fact that among
16,858 victims of the German occupation on the territory of the Olkusz district
Jews constituted up to 15,067 people (89,4%).

After the war, although some of
the surviving Jews returned to Olkusz, the local Jewish community failed to be
reconstituted because most of Jews left the town soon. However, shortly after
the war, the Jewish temporary committee existed in Olkusz.

In 1948 the Munich Court of
Honor declared Mair Kiwkowicz, a Jewish policeman from the Olkusz ghetto, to be
a traitor of a Jewish nation for his activities during the war.

Families of Rejia and Tobiasz,
and Chaja and Josek Zilberszac, stayed in Olkusz the longest,
till April 1966 and they carried out together a dust-absorbing mask manufacture
"TEZET".

In 1972 the Olkusz Association
in Israel published in Tel Aviv a commemorative book (Yizkor Book) of Olkusz
Jews: "Olkusz; memorial book to a community that was exterminated
during the Holocaust". Zwi Yashiv was its editor. The book, published
in Hebrew (several fragments in Yiddish), contains many memoirs and unique
photographs, among other things, of an Olkusz synagogue.

Till now only few Olkusz Jews
live, scattered all over the world (Austria, Israel, Germany and the US).

There is a special Cultural Association in Olkusz "Gate" (Polish:
Stowarzyszenie Kulturalne "Brama")whichmake the efforts to
preserve the heritage of the Olkusz Jews. Among other activities, they
published Krzysztof Kocian's book: Zaglada Olkuskich Zydow.